How to change the appearance of swing components?

Hi all,

I'm new to Java but I have extensive experience of both PHP and C/C++.

I am using the javax.swing package because it seemed to do what I want quickly (i.e. building a GUI), but it looks so clunky! How can I alter the appearance of Swing components? E.g., I'm using a JTabbedPane, and I want the label text on each tab to be in a smaller and more elegant font than the default. Is there a way to do this?